A Brazilian Supreme Federal Court justice has ordered the arrest of Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro and brother of the opposition candidate in the presidential runoff on October 25.
He is currently in the United States, and the warrant takes effect if he returns.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes directed on October 8 that a warrant be issued and that Bolsonaro begin serving a sentence of four years and two months, initially in a semi-open regime that permits work outside prison by day, Agência Brasil and G1 reported.
The conviction, for coercion in the course of judicial proceedings, became final on October 3 after appeals were exhausted, the court secretariat certified. The First Panel of the court had thrown out a last appeal by his defence in September.
Moraes also cancelled Bolsonaro’s Brazilian passports and ordered his name entered on the national prison-monitoring register, the Banco Nacional de Monitoramento de Prisões.
“The defendant cannot benefit from his own wrongdoing by fleeing the national territory to an unknown location for the purpose of thwarting the application of criminal law,” Moraes wrote, according to the Associated Press.
The First Panel of the Supreme Federal Court sentenced the former federal deputy in June in a unanimous ruling.
Prosecutors said he lobbied the Trump administration for sanctions on Brazilian officials and higher tariffs on Brazilian exports in an attempt to influence the trial of his father.
Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced in September 2025 to 27 years for plotting a coup.
The June ruling also imposed a fine of R$162,000 (€28,868), set as 50 day-fines of two minimum wages each, and a suspension of political rights for as long as the conviction holds.
Eduardo Bolsonaro did not appoint private counsel and was represented by the federal public defender’s office.
He has lived in the United States since 2025, holds a green card granted in July and has been based in Texas. The move cost him his seat in Congress, which he forfeited for missing sittings, and his post as a federal police investigator.
The Associated Press described him as a link between his brother, Flávio Bolsonaro, and the Trump administration, including at a White House meeting in May.
Agência Brasil noted that he is unlikely to serve the sentence while abroad, and that an extradition request would be difficult to enforce in Washington.
The US and Brazil have had an extradition treaty signed in 1961 and in force since 1964; it is not clear that its terms would cover this case.
The federal police was weighing whether to seek his extradition, CNN Brasil reported on October 9, and no request had been filed. Brazilian authorities list him as wanted rather than as a fugitive, because he can still hand himself in.
The order lands weeks before the runoff between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro. Flávio Bolsonaro took 47.03 per cent of valid votes in the first round on October 4, against 45.16 per cent for Lula.
Moraes led the inquiry that produced Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction. The family regards him as a political enemy.
Eduardo Bolsonaro has said he is the target of political persecution. He called the order “arbitrary, untimely and useless” in a statement on social media on October 8 and said voters would settle the matter on October 25.
Flávio Bolsonaro said the ruling was “completely innocuous” and would come to nothing, and accused Moraes of manufacturing a story during the campaign, Poder360 reported. He said almost 50 senators now backed impeaching the justice.
Moraes is the same judge Washington sanctioned in 2025 and then cleared.
On July 30, 2025 the US Treasury put him on the Global Magnitsky list for serious human rights abuse, accusing him of arbitrary pre-trial detentions and of suppressing expression, including in the case against Jair Bolsonaro.
The State Department said he had abused his authority to silence critics and to order US social-media firms to ban accounts.
His visa had been revoked days earlier.
The Treasury lifted the sanctions on December 12, 2025, along with those on his wife and an institute she heads, as the Trump administration rolled back tariffs on Brazil.
Senator Flávio Bolsonaro has finished ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election, sending the two men to a run-off on October 25. Neither reached the majority of valid votes needed to win outright. https://t.co/uscP8T0WW4
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) October 5, 2026
